North Korean Mourners Line Streets for Kim Jong-il’s Funeral

A portrait of Kim Jong-il was displayed during the procession through the streets of Pyongyang on Wednesday.Credit
Kyodo News, via Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-un, the designated dynastic heir in North Korea, walked alongside the hearse carrying the body of his father, Kim Jong-il, through snow-covered downtown Pyongyang on Wednesday, leading a state funeral that provided early glimpses of who is serving as guardians of the young, untested leader.

The elaborate funeral was closely watched for signs of shifts in power in the country’s enigmatic leadership. Mr. Kim’s two elder brothers, Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-chol, were nowhere to be seen.

Leading the funeral alongside and behind Mr. Kim was a familiar mix of military generals and party secretaries. The group included elderly stalwarts from the days of Kim Jong-il and his father, the North’s founding president, Kim Il-sung. But younger officials who expanded their influence while playing crucial roles in grooming the son as Kim Jong-il’s successor were also represented.

Most prominent were the two men whose names seldom fail to pop up when North Korea watchers try to dissect the palace intrigues in the capital, Pyongyang: Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-un’s uncle and vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, and Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, who leads the North Korean military’s general staff.

Mr. Jang’s influence as a power broker expanded after Kim Jong-il, his brother-in-law, suffered a stroke in 2008. He appeared committed to extending the Kim family’s rule to the third generation, but his own personal ambition remains shrouded in mystery.

Vice Marshal Ri, a relatively unknown figure during most of Kim Jong-il’s rule, rose to prominence in the past two years as Mr. Kim began grooming his son as his heir. He is now considered an important backer of Kim Jong-un in the Korean People’s Army, whose support is crucial to his consolidation of power.

“If anything, the funeral indicates that Jang Song-taek and Ri Yong-ho will be the closest aides to Kim Jong-un,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at Korea University in Seoul.

Less certain is whether a power game may play out among these aging generals and party secretaries more than twice Mr. Kim’s age, and if so, what form that would take. Mr. Kim could become either a forceful leader or a figurehead, depending on whether he can replicate the skills of his father, who kept the elites in line both by stocking their households with foreign luxury goods and by sending anyone who fell out of favor to labor camps, analysts said.

American officials and analysts have worried that any power struggle that challenges Mr. Kim’s control could prompt him to lash out, possibly by staging some military action against South Korea.

On the surface, the funeral appeared to proceed with the precision of totalitarian choreography.

Kim Jong-un walked with one hand on the hearse and the other raised in salute. Neat rows of soldiers in olive-green uniforms stood, hats off and bowing, in front of the Kumsusan mausoleum, where Kim Jong-il’s body had been lying in state since his death was announced on Dec. 19.

When the funeral motorcade stopped before the soldiers at the start of a 25-mile procession through Pyongyang, they gave a last salute and a military band played the national anthem. Mr. Kim and other top officials did not walk the entire route; from inside their limousines, they watched crowds of citizens and soldiers wailing along the boulevards under a cold, gray sky.

Soldiers appeared to lead the outpouring of grief. State television broadcasts showed them beating their chests. They flailed their hands, stomped their feet and shouted “Father, Father,” as the limousine carrying a gigantic portrait of a smiling Kim Jong-il on the roof crawled past the crowds, followed by his hearse.

In one scene, soldiers rushed to keep mourners from spilling into the road. But even among the crowds, the intensity of grief — a marker of loyalty to the regime — seemed to vary; those standing farther from the road seemed less emotional.

The funeral lasted three hours. The funeral, and the mourning, appeared to have been meticulously staged by the government to strengthen the cult of personality underpinning the Kim family’s rule. State television and radio announcers exhorted North Koreans to support the family with their lives. They even attributed the heavy snowfall ahead of the funeral to “heaven’s grief.”

During his procession with the hearse, Kim Jong-un was followed by Mr. Jang, as well as Kim Ki-nam and Choe Tae-bok, both octogenarian members of the Politburo. Kim Ki-nam runs the state’s propaganda machine. Mr. Choe is the party secretary in charge of external relations. Generals walked on the other side of the hearse, led by Vice Marshal Ri, followed by Kim Yong-chun, the defense minister, and Kim Jong-gak, whose job is to monitor the allegiance of other generals. U Dong-chuk, director of the North’s secret police and spy agency, was also there.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, said the party meetings in the coming months would probably elevate a new group of future leaders in their 30s and 40s, mostly children of current members of the elite in their 70s and 80s. “Largely unknown, these are people who really wield influence behind the old men,” he said.

In the past week, the government has moved briskly to rally the agencies of power behind Mr. Kim. The North Korean media has referred to him as the “sagacious leader of our party, state and military.”

On Wednesday, Rodong Sinmun, the main newspaper of the Workers’ Party, said the North’s nuclear weapons program and long-range missile technology were among the biggest achievements of Kim Jong-il. “Thanks to these legacies, we do not worry about the destiny of ourselves and posterity at this time of national mourning,” it said.

And on Thursday, as part of a memorial service that drew a large crowd to the main plaza in central Pyongyang, Kim Yong-nam, president of the North Korean Parliament, delivered a speech urging the military and people to rally around Kim Jong-un to "solidify his monolithic leadership."

"He is the supreme leader who inherits the ideology, leadership, courage and audacity of Comrade Kim Jong-il," he said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that a Defense Ministry spokesman was denying reports that the Chinese soldiers had entered North Korea “as requested by the country to help maintain its stability.”

In a closed-door briefing before the National Assembly in Seoul, officials of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service noted that Mr. Jang, Mr. Kim’s uncle, might even expand his influence into the military to ensure a smooth transition, according to lawmakers who attended the briefing. Last Saturday, Mr. Jang appeared in a military uniform for the first time on state television, wearing a general’s insignia.

The cohesion of the government, and of North Korean society, has suffered since a famine killed at least tens of thousands of people in the 1990s. The famine weakened the state’s control on people’s movement, and an influx of information from China has become one of the biggest threats to the government’s command over the population.

On Wednesday, defectors from North Korea living in the South released 10 giant balloons toward the North with 200,000 leaflets urging North Koreans to “rise up” against the government.

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Beijing.

A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2011, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Protocol of Funeral Procession Signals Continuity in North Korean Power. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe